I have an anthropological theory based on Engels’ work.
Gender roles as we know them today were probably an innovation that emerged from the creation of private property. Sperm donors could have sex with anyone they wanted because there wasn’t a way to actually track down “fathers” before DNA testing, but child bearers had to be monogamous in order to ensure the proper transfer of wealth through generations of the family because it was always possible to know who the “mother” was.
Gender, therefore, was actually a class distinction. Sperm donors became “men” and child bearers became “women”. That’s why hunter-gatherer societies without the concept of private property can have so many different gender expressions, whereas we have a hard man/woman dichotomy. As long as the heritability of property is in question there needs to be a legitimized dictatorial unit that can control it, and because men were more free than women they became the dominant organizers of heritability.
The advent of DNA testing and birth control and abortion changed this dynamic significantly and equalized the male/female power dynamic, so we saw the rise of feminism and challenges to patriarchy. Heritability now wasn’t just a question of fatherhood, but parentage. Patriarchy still reigned, but I think it’s safe to say there was a significant cultural shift and patriarchy has entered a decline.
The family unit was still intact, though, so the man/woman dichotomy still served a function and gender remained a functional innovation.
What is happening now is the decline of property ownership under late-stage capitalism. In a world where no one owns anything and everything is just being rented, what purpose does heritability serve? I have nothing to pass on to my descendants, it doesn’t really matter who my parents are or who my children are or what equipment I have. I’m not a man or a woman, I’m a labor unit.
The decline of patriarchy has thus accelerated, but more importantly, the decline of the nuclear family unit has begun as well and the heritability question is becoming irrelevant.
And, without these rigid cultural structures, people are rediscovering who they are on their own.
(this is a rough idea obviously, just something I’ve been thinking about a lot since I started my transition)
Well, I was basing my idea off of Engles’s "The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State". In it he writes about the role private property played in the emergence of modern gender roles (among many other things), and listening to a Red Menace podcast about the book caused something to twig in my brain to connect declining private property ownership to the erosion of gender roles and seemingly sudden rise in queer identification
tbh this is just a half-baked idea I wanted to share lol
I have an anthropological theory based on Engels’ work.
Gender roles as we know them today were probably an innovation that emerged from the creation of private property. Sperm donors could have sex with anyone they wanted because there wasn’t a way to actually track down “fathers” before DNA testing, but child bearers had to be monogamous in order to ensure the proper transfer of wealth through generations of the family because it was always possible to know who the “mother” was.
Gender, therefore, was actually a class distinction. Sperm donors became “men” and child bearers became “women”. That’s why hunter-gatherer societies without the concept of private property can have so many different gender expressions, whereas we have a hard man/woman dichotomy. As long as the heritability of property is in question there needs to be a legitimized dictatorial unit that can control it, and because men were more free than women they became the dominant organizers of heritability.
The advent of DNA testing and birth control and abortion changed this dynamic significantly and equalized the male/female power dynamic, so we saw the rise of feminism and challenges to patriarchy. Heritability now wasn’t just a question of fatherhood, but parentage. Patriarchy still reigned, but I think it’s safe to say there was a significant cultural shift and patriarchy has entered a decline.
The family unit was still intact, though, so the man/woman dichotomy still served a function and gender remained a functional innovation.
What is happening now is the decline of property ownership under late-stage capitalism. In a world where no one owns anything and everything is just being rented, what purpose does heritability serve? I have nothing to pass on to my descendants, it doesn’t really matter who my parents are or who my children are or what equipment I have. I’m not a man or a woman, I’m a labor unit.
The decline of patriarchy has thus accelerated, but more importantly, the decline of the nuclear family unit has begun as well and the heritability question is becoming irrelevant.
And, without these rigid cultural structures, people are rediscovering who they are on their own.
(this is a rough idea obviously, just something I’ve been thinking about a lot since I started my transition)
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Well, I was basing my idea off of Engles’s "The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State". In it he writes about the role private property played in the emergence of modern gender roles (among many other things), and listening to a Red Menace podcast about the book caused something to twig in my brain to connect declining private property ownership to the erosion of gender roles and seemingly sudden rise in queer identification
tbh this is just a half-baked idea I wanted to share lol